I have to say something good about billable hour: it made me value my time more. I used to work as a freelancer in tech, so I had to bill my time. I was billing my time at 50€/hour. Out of work, when I was doing something I liked, I didn´t think of the price of my time, but when I had to do something I didn´t like I thought "would I do this if I was payed 50€/hour?" Depending on the answer, I would try to leverage that.

Since then I try to make the most of my time. Not only my personal time alone, but also I think about who I spend my time with. Apart from my parents, my wife and my daughters (which is always a very valuable time) I try to spend my time only with people who provides value to my life, and I try to avoid people who don´t.

One example: 2 months ago my father died. We used to spend time together, less than I would have liked when I think of it now, but back then I was not that aware of it. I remember we would go work on the fields growing vegetables, collecting olives and trimming the trees. I remember one day that I was a bit tired when we were setting up a new land and trimming some very old, mostly useless, olive trees, so I asked my father (in a rude way):

- "why are we doing this? why are we wasting so much time and doing so much effort just to clean some old trees that will hardly provide enough olives to make a few olive oil litres?

His answer was so clear, emotional and bonding that still hurts me today. He answered:

- What? Who cares about the trees? The important thing is the time that we are spending together.

I would have never thought that now, I would pay several thousands just to spend a single more hour with him.